美国国家公共电台 NPR Like Lemons? Quinoa? Thank This Food Explorer For Bringing Them To Your Plate

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The American dinner plate today is an exercise in variety, and that's thanks in part to a man named David Fairchild. He was a government botanist¹ at the end of the 19th century. Back then, meals were mostly about sustenance², and Fairchild traveled the world, bringing back exotic foods like avocados, kale, citrus fruits, mangoes. He even shares responsibility for the flowering cherry trees that fill Washington, D.C., with pink blossoms every spring.

The journalist Daniel Stone has a new book out about Fairchild. It's called "The Food Explorer: The True Adventures Of The Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats." I asked Stone to begin by describing Fairchild and his work.

DANIEL STONE: This was a man of the late-19th century who grew up on the plains of Kansas, and he had two main passions. He loved plants, and he loved to travel. And he found a way to get paid to explore the world in search of novel foods, novel crops and novel plants that didn't exist in America so he could bring them back here and introduce them to farmers and eaters.

SHAPIRO: This brand of person is very familiar to a 21st century individual - a foodie, a world traveler. Was this a brand of person that people around 1900 would recognize?

STONE: This was very rare. This was an era where people did not travel very far. It was difficult. It was dangerous. It was all by boat, by steamer. Fairchild traveled to more than 50 countries and met all sorts of people, some hostile, some diplomatic, some friendly. And he outran diseases. He got arrested. And he made it back with seeds almost every time.

SHAPIRO: He comes close to dying a bunch of times in this book.

STONE: Yeah. He caught typhoid at one point. He gets arrows shot at him in the Malay islands. He almost falls off a mule³ over a canyon⁴ in the Andes while he's looking for quinoa. But he survives.

SHAPIRO: He found quinoa way before quinoa was cool.

STONE: Technically⁵ the people of Central America and northern South America found quinoa...

SHAPIRO: True. True.

STONE: ...Centuries ago. But Fairchild goes and he finds this crop that's been misunderstood for a century, right? People don't know. Do you eat the leaves like spinach⁶? Do you eat the grain - which is not really a grain. It's a protein. And so a lot of the reason why quinoa only peaked in the last two decades and really the last decade is because of marketing⁷.

SHAPIRO: Tell me about his actual tactics for getting plants because sometimes it sounds like diplomacy⁹ and sometimes it sounds like espionage¹⁰.

STONE: Well, he started out as many of us do in new jobs - awkward, unequipped with the tools needed. Sometimes he'd steal things outright¹¹ as he did in Corsica at one point when he's looking for new types of citron for lemons. He gets arrested and he has to leave very quickly. Eventually, he develops a tactic⁸ where he chats people up. He goes to markets in developing countries and finds what people are eating, finds out who's growing them and where they're growing them and the best growing methods. And he collects seeds and cuttings and offshoots. And then he learns how to pack them and to ship them to America for a trip that could take a month or two on a boat.

SHAPIRO: He has this really impressive list of foods and plants that he's responsible for bringing to the United States, but those are a tiny fraction of all of the things he tried to introduce to the United States that never caught on.

STONE: Right.

SHAPIRO: There's one moment in the book where he's sure he's discovered the next big thing - personal pineapples. And he's like, every breakfast plate is going to have an individual pineapple on it all across the United States.

STONE: In 1903, he circumnavigates southern Africa. He finds a pint-sized pineapple, like, the size of a banana, really small. And he says, everyone's going to love their own pineapple. Why do you need a big one anymore? And he tries to introduce it, but the pineapple growers at that point in the United States and in South America said, no, we want bigger pineapples. People want the biggest pineapples they can have. And that leads to a hundred years later, we have even bigger pineapples.

SHAPIRO: So was Fairchild a genius, or did he just stumble into being in the right place at the right time?

STONE: He got very lucky. He found a way to feed his wanderlust on a need that his country had, right? So much of the labor¹² force was farmers in that era. And the growth of America was really the growth of food.

SHAPIRO: In the introduction to this book, you write, few things have been American for long, including foods. Do you think there's something quintessentially American about what Fairchild did?

STONE: Absolutely. When you think of this country and the role of immigrants, foods have been immigrants, too. Apples - they come from Kazakhstan. Bananas come from New Guinea - right? - pineapples from Brazil. And oranges and lemons that have fueled the economies of Florida and California - they originated in China. Almost every food we eat is an immigrant.

SHAPIRO: Daniel Stone, thanks so much for talking with us about your new book.

STONE: Thank you, Ari.

SHAPIRO: The book is called "The Food Explorer: The True Adventures Of The Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats."

1 botanist   

n.植物学家

参考例句：

• The botanist introduced a new species of plant to the region.那位植物学家向该地区引入了一种新植物。
• I had never talked with a botanist before,and I found him fascinating.我从没有接触过植物学那一类的学者，我觉得他说话极有吸引力。

2 sustenance   

n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• The urban homeless are often in desperate need of sustenance.城市里无家可归的人极其需要食物来维持生命。

3 mule   

n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人

参考例句：

• A mule is a cross between a mare and a donkey.骡子是母马和公驴的杂交后代。
• He is an old mule.他是个老顽固。

4 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

5 technically   

adv.专门地，技术上地

参考例句：

• Technically it is the most advanced equipment ever.从技术上说，这是最先进的设备。
• The tomato is technically a fruit,although it is eaten as a vegetable.严格地说，西红柿是一种水果，尽管它是当作蔬菜吃的。

6 spinach   

n.菠菜

参考例句：

• Eating spinach is supposed to make you strong.据说吃菠菜能使人强壮。
• You should eat such vegetables as carrot,celery and spinach.你应该吃胡萝卜、芹菜和菠菜这类的蔬菜。

7 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

8 tactic   

n.战略，策略；adj.战术的，有策略的

参考例句：

• Reducing prices is a common sales tactic.降价是常用的销售策略。
• She had often used the tactic of threatening to resign.她惯用以辞职相威胁的手法。

9 diplomacy   

n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕

参考例句：

• The talks have now gone into a stage of quiet diplomacy.会谈现在已经进入了“温和外交”阶段。
• This was done through the skill in diplomacy. 这是通过外交手腕才做到的。

10 espionage   

n.间谍行为，谍报活动

参考例句：

• The authorities have arrested several people suspected of espionage.官方已经逮捕了几个涉嫌从事间谍活动的人。
• Neither was there any hint of espionage in Hanley's early life.汉利的早期生活也毫无进行间谍活动的迹象。

11 outright   

adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的

参考例句：

• If you have a complaint you should tell me outright.如果你有不满意的事，你应该直率地对我说。
• You should persuade her to marry you outright.你应该彻底劝服她嫁给你。

12 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。